University of Idaho Director of Human Resources Brandi Terwilliger detailed how COVID-19 continues to impact faculty members on campus, highlighting incoming benefits and remote learning in a Faculty Senate meeting Tuesday.
Newly implemented policy proposals will bring a slight departure from prior benefits afforded to the population, signaling a different approach to targeted relief. On a smaller scale, adjustments continue to be made at the university in order to accommodate for flexibility in instruction method.
The COVID-19 Relief Bill will allow for unused flexible spending as well as dependent care spending to roll over to 2021. This functions in concert with the new American Rescue Plan Act, Terwilliger said, which will allow for dependent care contribution limits to be temporarily increased.
Terwilliger also addressed additional policy-related benefits that can be used in the future that will affect the population more widely. The first of which is a “surprise billing” policy, set to be implemented on Jan. 1, 2022.
“The goal is to protect patients from surprised billing that may arise under emergency services, air medical services and out-of-network providers at in-network facilities,” Terwilliger said.
The second policy expected to be implemented is the Transparency Rule. This policy, which will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2023, will allow individuals to receive real-time information on how medical costs will be shared between themselves and their medical insurer, Terwilliger said.
While these policies are solidified, the future degree of flexibility that instruction will have going forward remains uncertain.
The centralized model that has been used for remote instruction requests will be maintained, but there will be some discrepancies in requirements for remote learning requests between the summer 2021 and fall 2021 semesters. Summer 2021 remote requests can be extended without medical documentation, whereas fall 2021 requests will require updated forms, Terwilliger said.
Leadership at the university is continuing to collaborate on what vision is most realistic for the future, as it remains unclear how long alternative instruction methods will need to remain.
“What’s the philosophy of the university going to be going forward?” Terwilliger said. “Is it going to be more of the norm or is it going to be more of the prior COVID-19 norm?”
The Argonaut will continue to cover remote learning changes at the university.
Royce McCandless can be reached at arg-news@uidaho.edu